One of the main problems in evaluating financial performance arises in carrying out comparisons between municipalities, as no account is taken of the impact of certain factors of the social and economic environment on the indicators in question. In this study, the concept of financial condition is applied, revealing the influence of such factors, and a methodology is proposed to minimize their effects on the results of the evaluation. The results of applying these to a sample of municipalities in Spain reveal that the model is useful for reinforcing the value of benchmarking between municipalities with similar characteristics. Points for practitioners The use of indicators for evaluating financial performance has advanced considerably in recent years. However, many criticisms have been made by public sector managers concerning the application of such indicators. One of these is that, in many cases, the values measured by different authorities are not comparable, as the services they provide differ significantly. If local authorities were grouped according to the social and economic factors influencing their provision of public services, the evaluations made would be much more effective, facilitating decision-making by supervisory bodies and by municipal managers.

We have performed high-resolution three-dimensional simulations of relativistic jets with beam-flow Lorentz factors of up to 7, a spatial resolution of 8 cells per beam radius, and up to 75 normalized time units in order to study the morphology and dynamics of three-dimensional relativistic jets. Our simulations show that the coherent fast backflows found in axisymmetric models are not present in three-dimensional models. We further find that when the jet is exposed to nonaxisymmetric perturbations, (1) it does not display the strong perturbations found for three-dimensional classical hydrodynamic and MHD jets (at least during the period of time covered by our simulations) and (2) it does propagate according to the one-dimensional estimate. Small three-dimensional effects in the relativistic beam give rise to a lumpy distribution of apparent speeds like that observed in M87. The beam is surrounded by a boundary layer of high specific internal energy. The properties of this layer are briefly discussed.

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